Police Recorded Crime Statistics

Cheryl Gillan Excerpts

Thursday 16th October 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to debate the report of the Select Committee on Public Administration, “Caught red-handed: Why we can’t count on Police Recorded Crime statistics”.

The Public Administration Committee’s remit includes oversight of the work of the UK Statistics Authority and the Government Statistical Service. We attach the highest importance to that responsibility. We took a decisive role in decisions leading to the appointment of the present chair of the UK Statistics Authority, Sir Andrew Dilnot. The Committee announced a programme of work for this Parliament that involves a series of studies to examine statistics and their use in Government, their accuracy and relevance, and their availability, accessibility and intelligibility to the public. A full description of that series is set out on our website, along with the reports that we have published so far.

We must ensure that the UK Statistics Authority is doing all that it can to deliver the very best statistics for Government, the public and public services. That helps deliver better policy, improved scrutiny and media reporting and ultimately better democracy. Measurement is a key way of holding Government to account. We can be proud of UK statistics, which are renowned throughout the world and trusted. I pay tribute to the Government Statistical Service and to all statisticians in Government and the public services, on whose professionalism and impartiality we all depend. The Committee’s programme of work aims to ensure that all statisticians and others who work with data and evidence across the public sector have the tools to do so effectively. We made it clear that we remain prepared when necessary to take up issues that might arise concerning statistics and their use in Government.

The process leading to the inquiry on crime statistics started when a Metropolitan police constable—James Patrick, a constituent of mine who worked in the statistics section of the Metropolitan police—walked into my advice surgery. He told me that he had been trying to raise concerns that the crime figures recorded by the Metropolitan police were being manipulated. For example, despite all the attention given to improving the police response to women reporting rape and to other sexual offences, they were still being under-recorded, according to him, by between 22% and 25%. Moreover, his persistent efforts to raise his concerns with his command chain had been met with indifference and then resistance. When he started to blog and write publicly about his concerns, it turned to outright hostility as the command chain resorted to disciplinary measures in an attempt to silence him.

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)]

Although I am now a proud member of the Public Administration Committee, I was not a member when the report was done. Does my hon. Friend agree that PC James Patrick’s actions were both courageous and in the public interest, and that he has done a great service to this country in ensuring that this matter is highlighted, as the Committee has done?

[Mr Jenkin]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is worth emphasising that under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998, PC Patrick should have been afforded some protection. I will come to the position of whistleblowers later in my remarks.

Our report, which was published this April, draws on evidence that we took under full parliamentary privilege from James Patrick. However, that was by no means the only evidence on which our conclusions relied. Our witnesses included Paul Ford, secretary of the Police Federation National Detective Forum; Dr Rodger Patrick—no relation—a former chief inspector at West Midlands police; and Peter Barron, a former detective chief superintendent at the Metropolitan police. They all fully corroborated Mr Patrick’s analysis. We heard about the various techniques that have crept into the culture of policing to help police meet crime reduction targets, leading to the corruption of police recorded crime statistics, so that they are less meaningful than they should be.

Those techniques include cuffing, in which multiple incidents are recorded as a single crime, and crimes such as burglary being recorded as less serious offences, such as theft or criminal damage. James Patrick also told us about nodding—offenders admitting to a number of offences in exchange for being charged with a less serious crime and getting a lighter sentence. There is also skewing, which is when more resources are put into the specific areas measured by performance indicators at the expense of other work.

All those techniques are designed to make constabularies look as though they are doing a better job than they actually are, as became evident after a sharper fall in crime was recorded by the police than in the crime survey for England and Wales. It was a statistical indicator that had already raised eyebrows in the UK Statistics Authority. Such things are done to improve individual officers’ job performance appraisals, promotion prospects and, ultimately, salaries.

We also heard about the terrible effect of such practices on the effectiveness of the police. It fails the victims of crime, because the crimes that they have attempted to report are not attended to. It results in the misallocation of police resources, because under-recorded crimes become neglected. Indeed, Mr Patrick believes that it contributed to the Metropolitan police’s failure to contain the London riots three years ago, because the new shift systems established by the Metropolitan police were based on a false understanding of crime patterns across London drawn from police recorded crime statistics. This adds up to a lack of trust, and raises questions about police leadership that must seriously affect police effectiveness.

We also took evidence from police and crime commissioners, such as our own from Essex, Nick Alston, who warned, in my view wisely, that however much police may think they have taken action to address the problems, ingrained attitudes and behaviour can have a long tail and take a long time to change. We also heard from academics Professor Stephen Shute and Professor Mike Hough of the Crime Statistics Advisory Committee, who told us:

“Lack of leadership results in decay in the recording systems.”

They said that there was

“no doubt that there has been dishonest manipulation at one end, through wilful blindness, to misunderstanding and ignorance, to the inappropriate exercise of discretion within a complicated set of rules.”

The Committee found that police recorded crime statistics were unreliable and inaccurate. Lax supervision of recorded crime data meant that police were failing in their core role of protecting the public and preventing crime. This is not just about inaccurate numbers; it is about the long crisis of values and ethics at the heart of our national police force. The poor data integrity that we found reflects the poor quality of leadership within the police. Whether the police comply with the core values of policing, including accountability, honesty and integrity, will determine whether the proper quality of police recorded crime data can be restored. I emphasise that there is much evidence that action is now being taken on that.

We found strong evidence that the police have under-recorded crime, particularly sexual crime such as rape, in many police areas. There remain wide disparities in no-crime rates—that is, where police decide that a crime did not take place—following reports of rape, for example. In January 2014, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary, on behalf of the Rape Monitoring Group, released a compendium of statistics on recorded rapes in each force over the previous five years. I invite right hon. and hon. Friends and colleagues to look at the table showing how wide the variation is among different forces across England and Wales in their no-criming of rape. According to the figures, in Lincolnshire, for example, 26% of all reported rapes were no crimed in 2012-13; by contrast, in Merseyside, only 4% were. The national average was 11.9%.

The main reason for misrecording was the continued prevalence of numerical targets, which create perverse incentives to misrecord crime. A police officer is presented with a conflict. Does he or she record attempted burglary, or downgrade it to criminal damage in order to achieve the target? That creates conflict between the achievement of targets and core policing values. We deprecate the use of targets in the strongest possible terms, because most police forces are still in denial about the damage targets cause, both to data integrity and to standards of behaviour. We found an amazing disparity of attitude towards targets across police and crime commissioners and among chief constables. Our official police witnesses, most notably the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, were somewhat defensive and seemed unready to acknowledge that their statistics were inherently flawed. Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe told us that the accuracy of data on rape and sexual offences was

“a lot better than it was, if we took it back five to 10 years.”

However, he did not think that it was entirely reliable and agreed that there was cause for concern.

The UK Statistics Authority has overall responsibility for the assessment of the quality of Government statistics. It designates a reliable series of statistics as national statistics only if they are good enough. As a result of the Public Administration Committee’s inquiry, shortly before the chair of the UK Statistics Authority appeared before us to give evidence on police recorded crime, it stripped police recorded crime data of the quality kitemark of national statistics. What our inquiry had already exposed demonstrated that the numbers produced by polices forces were simply not good enough to rely on. The Home Office, the Office for National Statistics and the UK Statistics Authority had all been far too passive in addressing the problem, even though they had all known about it for years.

[Mr Jenkin]

It simply means that the raw data, on the basis of which so many decisions about the allocation of police manpower and resources are made, are of questionable accuracy. That cannot be a good thing. It also means that we found that there is a culture and attitude and ingrained behaviours that are in conflict with how we expect our police to behave and how the vast majority do aspire to behave. That is what we must address. A leadership model based on targets is a major cause of the problem and is flawed. I have been told anecdotally that there is a generation of “target junkies” in our police forces who have been brought up on and believe in targets and will find it difficult to move away from them. However, that is the cultural and attitudinal change that police leaders must bring about.

[Mrs Gillan]

When looking at the Government response to the report, I was delighted to see that the Home Secretary had taken positive steps in making it clear publicly that she has actively discouraged commissioners from setting performance targets, which is a good step. Does my hon. Friend have any more information on that? Failing that, hopefully the Minister can provide some information on how successful the Home Secretary’s public pronouncements have been, without interfering with the police and crime commissioners’ independence, in bringing influence to bear on the subject of targets being quite the wrong way to proceed.

[Mr Jenkin]

Our inquiry found that, for example, the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, through the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, has continued to set targets. It is tempting in our political culture to set high-level and public targets, but I wonder whether the public believe the numbers anyway. It is the first law of science: as soon as one tries to measure something it changes its properties. That is what is happening in this case. Poor data integrity reflects the poor quality of leadership within the police, which the Home Secretary and the Minister here today have understood. That is why the Government have abolished national policing targets. It is for police forces and police and crime commissioners, including the Mayor of London in his equivalent role, to embrace and understand that and to believe it. That is a cultural change to which I hope this report is contributing. Otherwise, we are encouraging what amounts to institutional dishonesty about police recorded crime. What does that say about the police’s ability to comply with the core values of policing, including accountability, honesty and integrity? That is why PC James Patrick felt that it was his duty to speak out against what he found to be going on in his force.

Our report of course came on top of all the other controversies that have raised questions about the values and ethics of the police and their leadership. I will not list them all again now, but the whole question of leadership and values needs to be addressed. I yield to no one in my admiration and respect for so many police officers, chief constables and, indeed, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, who has had a distinguished career in public service and whose senior officers and force daily put themselves at risk in the line of duty. Yet those same officers have overseen a deeply cynical culture about the quality of leadership, honesty and integrity by presiding over such a thing. That is why we recommended that the Committee on Standards in Public Life conduct a wide-ranging inquiry into the police’s compliance with the new code of ethics, in particular the role of leadership in promoting and sustaining those values.

I note that the CSPL will now investigate the public accountability structures of the police. I have to say that that is not quite the inquiry which Parliament, through my Committee’s report, has asked it to conduct. We recommended that the CSPL should conduct

“a wide-ranging inquiry into the police’s compliance with the new Code of Ethics; in particular the role of leadership in promoting and sustaining these values in the face of all the other pressures on the force.”

Accountability structures will not of themselves promote the right values in police leadership and in policing. Accountability depends upon effective leadership, which in turn depends upon leadership that is trusting and is trusted by its subordinates, and that in turn depends upon high levels of trust and integrity within the organisation. If the CSPL is to conduct its inquiry effectively, it cannot avoid the issue of ethics and integrity. I am somewhat mystified about why it is not prepared to confront that question directly and openly, even if Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary is already looking at it. After all, CSPL stands for Committee for Standards in Public Life and its remit is ethics and standards. If it avoids the issue of ethics and standards in the police, it will achieve nothing except to mess with a highly charged political debate about whether police and crime commissioners should continue to exist, which does not seem to be so relevant to the remit of the CSPL. Our recommendation reflects our understanding of the need to challenge police operational leadership about how they promote and sustain the values set out in the new ethics code. I am encouraged by the engagement of the new College of Policing and of many chief police officers around the country, but the CSPL’s unique and independent perspective has more to offer.

Turning to whistleblowing, one of the most depressing and saddening parts of our inquiry was discovering how the Metropolitan police treated James Patrick, my constituent. I was not able to address that as fully as I will now, because an employment tribunal was pending. He withdrew from the process. He could not take any more; it had taken too heavy a toll on him and his family and he was forced to resign from the Metropolitan police. Acting as a whistleblower, PC Patrick tried to highlight serious concerns about police-recorded crime and the target culture. We are indebted to him for his courage in speaking out, in fulfilment of his duty to the highest standards of public service, despite intense pressures to the contrary. Paul Ford of the Police Federation told us that his organisation

“was dealing with a lot of stifled whistleblowers…We have lots of anecdotal information but, unfortunately, people are fearful of coming forward and raising concerns. That comes down to the whistleblowing aspect of the lack of protection for people, the peer pressure and the fear factor in terms of their future”.

I am pleased the Minister for Crime Prevention has told me that the Home Office is looking at a range of radical proposals to strengthen protection for whistleblowers in the police, but that has all come too late for my constituent. Nevertheless, I look forward to what the Minister will add in today’s debate.

Our inquiry, the evidence presented to the Select Committee and the reaction of the UK Statistics Authority, which withdrew its approval of the police recorded crime stats, vindicate Mr Patrick and his actions utterly and completely. As I quoted earlier, even the Metropolitan Police Commissioner agrees that

“there is clearly something that PC Patrick raises that we need to get to the bottom of.”

Despite that, I can only describe the treatment of my constituent James Patrick as shameful. By doing his duty and raising the issues, he showed the highest commitment to the core policing values, but as a result he became the victim of the most monstrous injustice. He was in effect hounded out of his job, following a long period of harassment by the Metropolitan police command chain, which, I dare say, used and abused the disciplinary process to get rid of him. It does the police no credit that a whistleblower should be treated in such a way. He was, for example, accused of a conflict of interest for publishing a book about the misuse of police recorded crime statistics, even though the proceeds were paid to a police charity. In an LBC radio programme in December last year, Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said that he would meet PC Patrick. He never did so.

Most shameful of all, the Police Federation saw fit to finance a libel action at the choice of a serving police officer against a former Cabinet Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds, but I could not persuade it to fund the legal expenses and representation of PC Patrick in the employment tribunal that he was due to appear before as part of his defence. I find that completely and utterly inexplicable, particularly after the Police Federation itself told us in evidence to our Committee how difficult things are for police whistleblowers in this country.

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[Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bayley, in a reversal of roles, with you keeping me in order rather than the historical position.

This is an important report. I congratulate the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), the Chair of the Public Administration Committee, on the very thorough way in which he introduced it and explained its contents. I will focus on its substance; however, I note that the Committee’s inquiry was initiated in an unusual way. I want to make it absolutely clear that it is right that we, as parliamentarians, stand up for a courageous whistleblower and look carefully, as the Committee has done, at the details that lie behind the complaint.

[Mrs Gillan]

One recommendation in the report was that the Home Affairs Committee hold an inquiry into the treatment of whistleblowers in the police. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of whether that has happened or whether there is any possibility that that will be looked at by the Home Affairs Committee, as it was quite a strong recommendation?

[Mr Brown]

I understand the recommendation. It is indeed a strong one and one that I support, but it is no longer my function to try to sort out demarcation disputes in this place, so although I have some experience of trying to do so, I will leave that to others, who are perhaps in a better position than I am to give a definitive answer to the point that the right hon. Lady quite rightly raises.

Today’s debate is the culmination of the Public Administration Committee’s work, which has been an effective parliamentary activity, and I congratulate the Chair and the rest of the Committee on their work. The Committee found strong evidence of under-recorded crime, which it attributed to lax compliance with the agreed national standards of victim-focused crime recording. In particular, sexual crimes such as rape were under-recorded as crimes.

The principal underlying cause is the conflict between achievement of targets and core policing values. That is a tremendously important point. The resources available to individual police forces must have a bearing on all this. However, especially in the case of sexual crimes such as rape, the emphasis must be on core policing values. Victims of those crimes must know that the police force is there to protect them, to take their complaint seriously and to be proactive in both recording the complaint as a crime and dealing with it as such.

The report has struck a raw nerve. As the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex has already pointed out, the UK Statistics Authority has stripped police-recorded crime data of its quality kitemark. My hon. Friend the Member for Glenrothes (Lindsay Roy) quite rightly asked in an intervention how serious that is. It is very serious. Decision makers rely on statistical evidence. If we believe in factual, evidence-based decision making, the evidence has to be accurate; if it is not, the decisions that follow will not necessarily be as focused as they should be. It would be important for any public authority, but given the special duties that go with the office of police constable, it is extraordinarily serious for the police.

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[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)]

I will make only a short contribution. I was not a member of the Committee when it carried out its excellent work. I join other hon. Members in congratulating the Chairman, my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), on his work. I pay tribute to his constituent, who seems to have paid a high price for making a valuable contribution to the way in which we record crime statistics.

I rise only because today the Office for National Statistics put out a release on crime statistics for the year ending June 2014. The latest figures in the crime survey for England and Wales show that, for the offences it covers, there were an estimated 7.1 million incidents of crime against households, which is a decrease of 16% compared with the previous year. I hope that the statistics are more accurate these days, because if so that represents good news across the board for us all. We all know victims of crime in our constituencies who suffer dreadfully and that decrease is welcome.

I was struck by two elements in the release. It says:

“In contrast, police recorded crime shows no overall change from the previous year, with 3.7 million offences recorded in the year ending June 2014. Prior to this, police recorded crime figures have shown year on year reductions”.

It goes on to say:

“The renewed focus on the quality of crime recording is likely to have prompted improved compliance with national standards in some police forces, leading to more crimes being recorded.”

I hope that that is a direct result of the sort of highlight that the Select Committee was able to provide in this place.

I share the concern of the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown) about rape in recorded crime, but it is telling—I hope the Minster will refer to this in his response—that the Committee said:

“Sexual offences recorded by the police saw a 21% rise from the previous year and continues the pattern seen in recent publications. Current, rather than historic, offences account for the majority of the increase…(73% within the last 12 months). Despite these recent increases, it is known that sexual offences are subject to a high degree of under-reporting.”

It seems that the Committee’s report has contributed to improving what happens in the United Kingdom, or at least in England and Wales, to statistics, which is important. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex, other members of the Committee and particularly those who provided evidence for making a valuable contribution to debate in this place.

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[Norman Baker]

I entirely agree with that comment; in fact, we are doing that. I will pick up on individual comments as I go through my remarks, including that point by the hon. Gentleman, which I agree with, as a matter of fact.

[Mrs Gillan]

I am grateful to the Minister for the information that approximately a third of our PCCs have unfortunately fallen into the trap of resetting targets. Will he tell the Public Administration Committee what avenues he has open to him to draw the attention of those PCCs to this debate and to the Committee’s work, so that he could perhaps suggest to them that they might like to take on board the Committee’s remarks and consider revising their policies? I appreciate that PCCs are independent, but is there some vehicle whereby the Home Office could be proactive in that regard, given that the Home Secretary has made that point about targets very clear at an earlier stage?

[Norman Baker]

As my right hon. Friend will know, Ministers of course regularly meet not only chief constables but PCCs. I do so; the Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims does so; and of course the Home Secretary does so. PCCs are in no doubt that the Home Office’s view is that targets are inappropriate, and no doubt they will be listening to this debate; I would be very surprised if they did not, as it is a major debate on policing. Nevertheless, I will obviously take the opportunity, as other Ministers will, to reinforce that view. However, as my right hon. Friend recognises, PCCs are independently elected, and they are responsible to their electors for their decisions.